


The Fic Writer

by SanSanFanFan



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, game of thrones
Genre: F/M, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 05:18:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2680565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SanSanFanFan/pseuds/SanSanFanFan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU where Sansa Stark writes her own fanfics based on a fantasy series that might sound a little familiar! She encounters Sandor in the British Library one sunny Saturday, and he is rude enough to read her fic over her shoulder!</p><p>Written for Bookhoor who gave me two prompts for my birthday fic thingy (mechanic and dog walking Sandor) which get a mention in the story... even if this in not what she was expecting me to write for her!</p><p>Well, they do say you should write what you know, so I wrote this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fic Writer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bookhoor](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=bookhoor).



_The imposing, muscular mechanic was pushing her back towards the bonnet of the car, his eyes burning with a fierce intensity as he placed large hands upon her waist and lifted her easily upon it.  She moaned as his lips captured hers again, as his larger thighs pushed against hers and as the floral summer dress rode up as his hardness rubbed against her ever so willing wetness-_

 

Sansa paused, leaning back away from her laptop against the wooden curve of the heavy chair, a frown knitting her shaped eyebrows.  It wasn’t… it wasn’t working.   Writing modern AU fics was mostly new to her, but this was actually her first attempt at writing smut, and it just sounded awfully clichéd as she read it back to herself. When she read the other smutty fics from the community they thrilled her, making her blush brightly in the midst of this reading room where she came every Saturday to indulge in her new-ish hobby.  Sometimes as she read them she found herself thinking about finding some quiet corner amongst the book stacks where she could relieve the growing tension between her legs… not that she ever would!

But her own writing seemed especially flat to her today. 

She leant forward again and tabbed over to her browser and opened Tumblr.  This was where she had found the small but utterly dedicated, and enormously welcoming, online community of Elisbrack ‘shippers’ just a few months back now.

When she’d first read the epic fantasy series ‘War Chant of the North’ she could never have imagined how the large paperback books would have captured her imagination and her passions.  She’d had even less idea that she’d find two of the characters so intriguing and inspiring that she’d be regularly spending entire Saturdays sitting in the British Library writing thousands of words about them! She’d imagined and reimagined the ways in which she thought they might play out the romance that the community thought the author, E. E. Craddock, was hinting at in the books. 

Elisienne was a beautiful dark haired maiden who honoured the standards and courtesies of the pseudo-medieval fantasy world she was bound to.  Brack was an older man, a warrior who spat curse words at the very thought of the kin-lords, the knights of this fantasy setting.  He was of a lesser ‘kin’ or noble house, than Elisienne, and he was regarded by many as a brute and a vicious, heartless killer.  But Elisienne’s plight in the high-kin court had touched him, and the handsome blond man had gone out of his way to help her, even though on the outside he was still cold and mocking towards her.

Sansa closed her eyes.  She could see Brack as the mechanic, foul tempered but tempted by the younger beautiful woman who had brought in the old rust bucket to be fixed.  She could see Elisienne tempted by his intense masculinity.  But she couldn’t get her head around how to get her vision of them down onto paper.  So instead he checked her activity log on Tumblr, and found some of her other, canon set, fics, had been liked and reblogged recently, making her smile.  In her ask box was a prompt from another Elisbrack shipper who wondered if she could write a Modern AU where Elisienne met Brack while she was walking her dog.  Sansa smiled as she imagined a scenario where Brack wanted to meet the beautiful girl he saw regularly on Hampstead Heath so he rushed about town trying to buy a dog to manufacture an introduction, but could only get a hold of a small, fluffy, yipping dog at odds with his large and intimidating size! She sent ‘WaitingforTheSkyTurnsBlack’ a quick reply saying that she’d certainly add it to the list of fics she was working on.

What would her housemates think of her?!  They’d seen her pretty floaty summer dress as she’d left the house in Kennington, and assumed she was going into the centre of London to spend time at one of her favourite museums, or to sit in Regent’s Park enjoying the bright sunshine after a long week of studying for her masters in education. They were used to her being on her own at least, even if they poked and prodded her about getting a boyfriend who could enjoy the museums and parks of London with her! But none of her three flatmates, Myranda, Jeyne and Shae, could possibly imagine that she was actually getting off the Northern line tube at Kings Cross instead and walking along Euston Road to the British Library to intentionally choose to lock herself away from the sunlight all day.  That she would be happily wallowing in the fantasy world Esme Eileen Craddock had created, surrounding herself with the books as talismans as she took a seat at her favourite desk in the high ceilinged and bright room.

Sansa looked around cautiously at the other Saturday users of the reading room.  Opposite was a scruffy old man with crazy wizard like hair carefully cutting out newspaper articles from a large stack of papers.  She squinted; they were all about Manchester United.  Next to Sansa on her left was a medical student, sweating over textbooks and notes.  Next to the football fan was an older woman, a set of reading glasses set at the end of her nose, making copious notes in a spiral bound book.  Sansa considered the grey hair of the woman, the intensity of her focus on her work.  Famous writers sometimes used the reading room, taking advantage of the immense catalogue of the library which held every single book published in the UK. Sansa imagined for a moment that this was Esme Craddock herself! How exciting would that be?! Perhaps she could find a way to convince her to join her for a cup of tea and she could quiz her about her intentions for Elisienne and Brack?  The last book had nearly slayed Sansa, when Elisienne had been forced to choose between staying in the high kin court, and going with Brack into the wild uncertainty of the Blood Reach as the hordes of Kin-Haris beat at the great gates to the Fort. 

She’d stayed, and Sansa had been morose for days after reading that! 

But Esme Craddock was a recluse, sticking to her native Highlands, there was no way she’d have travelled all the way to London, and no way would Sansa ever be able to ask her about Elisienne and Brack.  She drifted a hand over her copy of that last book, ‘The Cry of Kin’, and remembered every single detail of their few interactions.  There were other characters of course, hundreds of them as Esme had built a complex fantasy world of political alliances and dramatic wars.  But none held a place in her heart like Elisienne and Brack.

She pulled her hand away as though burnt as a shadow fell over her and a man took the empty seat at the desk to her right. 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw how large he was, and for a moment she was reminded of Brack again.  In the books he was described as a well-muscled man, but there were many of them amongst the kin-lords, free swords and soldiers of Northall.  What made Brack unique was his overall largeness, which some meta-writers and theory experts from the Elisbrack community had suggested was due to a secret blood link to the historical giant hero, Kin-Lord Drallen that Craddock had left clues to in the books.

This man was immense too, looming over Sansa as he sat down, and he seemed almost too large for the wooden chair he pulled up to the desk.  But unlike Brack he was dark.  Trying not to make her attention on him obvious, she could just see a generous thatch of black hairs on the arm that rested on the table as he lay out the books he was working from.  Curiosity drew her eyes quickly to the titles, quickly so he would not notice her rudeness. There was one on military tactics, two on medieval farming techniques, and another on the hundred year war.  An historian then, thought Sansa, surprised that the muscled man in the simple white t-shirt was an academic.

She turned back to her laptop and skipped back to her fic, rereading the few lines she had managed to write today.  Sighing, she closed the document and opened up a work in progress canon divergence fic instead.  When she found inspiration waning on Modern AUs she returned to her works set in the medieval world of Northall and relied on her strong feelings for the books to help her.  And she had a scene between Elisienne and Brack on the morning of the Dark Ride Battle she still wanted to rework. 

Brack was tricky to write.  As handsome as he was, with his long fair hair and sparkling eyes, he was coarse and mocking, a troubled past had left him with some deep emotional scars.  And getting the balance between his instinct to needle Elisienne for her propriety and his building desire for her was difficult.  She edited a few lines between them, softening Brack a little more, while making Elisienne more determined.  There was a lot at stake for her in this scene…

And then she realised that the man’s eyes were boldly staring at her laptop screen! He was reading her fic! She fought the urge to glare at him, but instead kept her eyes straight ahead as she slammed down the laptop screen and gathered the few things she had with her.  She’d go to one of the coffee shops for a bit, treat herself to an Earl Grey tea and one of their delicious lemon cakes, and then she’d return but she’d go to one of empty desks in another part of the large room where she’d not have someone so rudely reading over her shoulder!

She pushed the heavy chair back quickly and marched out of the room past the rows and rows of desks before getting out past security to the large glass foyer. 

The coffee shop was busy however, and she found herself at the back of a long queue, drifting into Elisbrack daydreams as it slowly moved forward.  So she near jumped in surprise when he spoke to her.

“So you like that fantasy and adventure shit do yer?” said a voice with a Scottish accent.

She turned and looked up at him, gasping as she saw the severe burns covering one side of his face.

“I’m sorry! That was rude of me!” she blurted out an apology.

“Aint nothing I’ve not heard before.” The dark face was stern above her, the burns giving a twist to his lips that almost looked like a sneer, even though she thought was smiling slightly now.  He was quite a lot older than her, but just as muscular as she’d thought, the white t-shirt he wore was tight on him, and the old jeans below it showed the shape of large thighs and legs. “I said, do you like knights and all that stuff?”

“Um, yes. Yes I do.” How much had he read of her fic?!

He nodded, but even though he’d said ‘shit’ before, he didn’t seem to be mocking her. “I saw your books, the ‘War Chant of the North’ series.  D’you think they’re any good?”

“I love them! I especially liked the last one, A Cry of Kin.  Even though it made me a bit sad…” She felt uncomfortable, talking with a stranger about her passion.  Talking to a stranger at all in London was unusual.  On the tube she kept her head in her books rather than risk making eye contact with anyone who might get the impression she wanted to talk with them.

“Aye? Why’s that?”

“Do you know the books?”

“Pretty well” he said, shrugging.  “I watched some of the TV adaptation as well.”

Sansa rolled her eyes at the mention of _that_ , the television series had cut out so many good scenes and characters! But she returned to the books. “Well, because of what happened between Elisienne and Brack…”

He laughed, and it was a deep belly laugh that surprised her.  He’d seemed so dark and stern, she hadn’t realised he had humour in him too.  “You… what is it, now? You ‘ship’ them!”

Anger flashed across her face.  He might have read the books, but he didn’t have the right to mock her for seeing the romance there.  “Well, yes! But I think the author does too!”

“Elisienne’s near enough a child! Maybe he just wants to protect her, hey?”

“There’s some of that.  But I think one day, in the future, they’ll be reunited and some of that confused attraction he has for her will be resolved! That’s how I see it anyway.” She turned back to the queue, indicating that this conversation was at an end. But he didn’t take the hint.

“Aye, you might be right. He’s certainly interested in her, and who wouldn’t given how she’s described? That long hair, her soft skin, those big brown eyes…” He was looking at her again, looking very intently.  She hardly looked like Elisienne though!  Sansa’s hair was red for a start, and her eyes were blue!

He continued even as Sansa wondered what he was thinking “The way he talks to her on the Labyrinthine Stairs might mean something, aye.  And then when he asks her to come with him, so he can take her home.  Yeah, maybe.  Maybe Craddock means you to read a romance into it.  So do you think they’ll end up living happily ever fucking after?”

This man was something else! Sansa looked up at him, ready to glare at him for his language, when her eyes were caught by his.  They were a dark grey, stormy even, under those thick dark eyebrows.  And then she felt an odd thrill run through her.  The same way she felt when she read some really good Elisbrack smut.  Oh god, she was blushing wasn’t she?!  He seemed to have moved closer as well…

“The queue’s moved up, little bird.”

She started as he called her that. That was what Brack called Elisienne after she sang at the feast for Kin-Intaff’s blood day celebration! Brack had meant it in a mocking way though as well, for how Elisienne said whatever her captors wanted to hear, like a parrot. But when this man said it in his hoarse voice she shivered just as Elisienne had done in Sansa’s fanfics.

“What do you want love?” asked the woman at the counter.

“Earl Grey tea and a slice of the lemon cake, please.”

“This is on me.  I want to pick your brain a bit more about those books.” Said the man and Sansa panicked a little.  Men talked to her sometimes, or called out crude things in the street, but she never, ever, casually joined them for the coffee some of them suggested.  Coffee with a stranger, as though… as though she was in one her modern AU fics!

But she found herself following him with her tray as he picked out a table with two chairs for them in the busy café.  He’d ordered a black coffee, and both of them left their hot drinks for a moment to cool.  Sansa picked at the cake, not knowing what to say now.

“Are you looking forward to the next book then, aye?” He said lightly, smiling.

“‘The Sky Turns Black’? Oh yes!”

“You one of the ones online who keep bitching about how fucking long its taking her?”

“Oh no, I would never! That would be terribly rude! What if she read those comments?! How horrible would that make her feel? I’m happy to wait, just as long as she gets it right!” Said Sansa enthusiastically and he nodded.

“And getting it right means getting Elisienne and Brack bloody well back together again, right?”  He was smiling that twisted smile of his again.

“It’s really up to Craddock I suppose.  But I doubt she would have written so much detail into them both and their interactions to have them apart for ever, don’t you think?”

He shrugged.  “Maybe I’m not as much of a romantic as you, girl.  The world of Northall seems pretty bleak and vicious if you ask me.  Brack himself is a pretty fucking vicious man.  Can’t see him getting the fairy-tale ending.”

“But maybe that’s why he should have it most of all?! To get the fairy-tale he used to love before he saw his family murdered by hypocritical kin-lords! He’s so horribly scarred by that-”

She stopped herself, realising what she had said.  The poor man’s face! “I… I…” she stammered.

He waved a hand, dismissing the comment and the awkward moment.

“You write fanfics, don’t you?”

She blushed brightly.  “No one’s meant to see them.  Well, no one offline!”

“What do you think Craddock makes of shi- stuff like that?” He corrected himself.

“I don’t really know.  I suppose she might take it as a compliment that her world is so loved, others want to write in it too…”

“Even when they’re making her characters do things she never expected? Some fanfic writers post erotic stuff online as well don’t they?”  He smirked as she grew even redder.  Thank god he hadn’t seen the first fic she’d been working on!

“Yes, but it’s done with totally respect for the characters, and it’s kept totally in character-”

“Ain’t it just an excuse women to write dirty stuff?” he smirked, riling her intentionally.

Sansa glared at him. “It’s not like that! And the novels themselves are hardly whiter than white.  The scene between Kin-Lord Jeryn and his sister by marriage for example?!”

He laughed deeply.  “You’ve got me there.  Maybe this E. E. Craddock started out as a fanfic writer.  Maybe all authors kind of do, as they learn and find their own fucking voices.”

“Do you know anything about her?” Sansa leant forward in her enthusiasm, forgetting that she was wearing a light summer dress with thin straps.  He did not seem to have forgotten, and she saw his eyes lower to look at her chest.  Which instantly went red with her embarrassment before she straightened her back once again.

“I… I…” It was his turn to stammer through his reaction, which oddly pleased her. “No more than you, most like. She’s a recluse they say, a near hermit living in the Highlands.  She never gives interviews.  There’s no photo on the book jacket.  She’s a bit of a fucking mystery, aye.”

Sansa sighed. “I wish I could meet her.  When I was in the reading room I was imagining having coffee with her, and being able to ask her about the books.”

He sipped his coffee, eyes sparkling with humour. “And ask her about Elisienne and Brack’s fates, aye?”

“I doubt she’d tell me anything anyway.  I’ll just have to wait for ‘The Sky Turns Black’ I suppose.”

He leant back a little, considering her.  “What is a girl that looks like you doing wasting your Saturday in a fucking library writing fanfics?”

“Well, I don’t see it as a waste for a start!” She said curtly.

“No, I dinnae mean that, little bird.  I meant you should be making your own romance with your own Brack someplace else.  In the park maybe.  That’s where I’d take a summer flower as pretty as you.”

She felt hot and dizzy under those serious, fierce, grey eyes. “I’ve never met anyone at all like Brack…” But even as she said it, she thought she might be wrong.  This stranger was very much like Brack.

“Oh my god! I don’t even know your name, I’m so incredibly rude.” She offered him her hand, and he fit it within the large paw of his.  She was surprised to feel rough callouses there, but then he’d never looked much like an academic! Perhaps he’d been some kind of craftsman before, or she could imagine a beast of a man like this being surrounded by nature. “Sansa Stark.”

“Pleased to meet you.  I’m Sandor Clegane.”

‘Sandor’.  She tried the name out in her mind.  It almost sounded like a character’s name from the ‘War Chant’ series.  She was surprised when he didn’t let go of her hand immediately.

“Sansa.” He said as he finally released her, almost sounding like he was trying out the word on his tongue as well. “D’you think you could trust a strange man you’ve only just met?”

Her eyes widened.  What did he mean?!

“It’s just that… there’s something I want to show you.  But not here.  Somewhere more private.”

She felt panicked, but also strangely thrilled.  What dirty thoughts were running through his head? Where they anything like the images that had just popped, unbidden, into hers?  She had never been the sort for public trysts… Or any trysts at all, beyond cautious first kisses, and fumbling gropes at friend’s parties with the few boys she’d found even remotely interesting.  But this older man was intriguing.  And very, very attractive.  Not conventionally.  Even without the scars his features could only be described as strong.  But he was attractive for other reasons. Yes, he was muscled and large, but Sansa found herself looking less and less at the large arms and chest in front of her, and more and more into his eyes, feeling something growing in the air between them.

“Yes, I’ll trust you.”

“Good girl.” He smiled and stood up, offering her a hand.

“My lady.”

She took it, again pleased by the feel of her palm against his rougher one.

He led her quickly away from the café. She wondered what people made of this large man hand in hand with the girl in the flowery dress.  Perhaps they would suspect that they were off for a private assignation among the books.  So she was surprised then when he took her downstairs to the lockers.  There were less people here, true, but if he had romantic intentions, he could have chosen another more romantic location.

But instead of moving to her, he opened a locker with a key on a chain at his waist.  Inside was a leather satchel, old and creased with age.  From it he withdrew a sheaf of papers, flicking through them quickly to find something before passing her a page.

“Here.  This is what I wanted to show you, Sansa.”

She took the page and found the first typed paragraph.  It had been written on an old manual typewriter, the letters jumping up and down the lines a little in their indentations of the page.  So it took her a moment to get used to the old fashioned font after spending so much time at her laptop with Tumblr open.

She read.

_Elisienne breathed out a gasp as the large shadow separated itself from the dark corridor’s depths.  But within moments he was at her side, a large hand clamping down on her mouth._

_“Hush, little bird.” There was softness in the words, and she felt the fear flee from her as she realised he was here.  He had made it alive through the barren waste of the Blood Reach! He had made it back to her!_

He grabbed the page from her shocked hands, and smiled darkly. “What is it they say in fandoms, ‘spoilers’?”

“Is that… is that real?!”  Sansa gasped. “Is that from ‘The Sky Turns Black’?! Are you with the publisher’s?! Do you know E. E. Craddock?!”

“Very well, lass, very well indeed.” He kept her eyes on his, as though waiting for something. A suspicion formed in her mind and she gasped.

“You… you can’t be?!”

“Why do you think she’s a recluse, little bird?” He smiled his twisted smile. “I aint one for author’s photos, not looking like this!”

Her head was spinning.  She had a thousand questions! But now she had the author of the ‘War Chant’ series in front of her she didn’t have a clue what to say!

“Never spoken with a fan before.  Meet them all the time of course, but they never get to know who I am.   Thought you might be like the screaming fans at the conventions I’ve seen on YouTube. Kind of glad you aint though!”

He gave a surprised ‘oof’ noise as she hugged him, somehow getting her arms around the broadness of him.

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for creating Northall, for Elisienne and Brack! Thank you!”

“That’s okay, girl.  I enjoy it, writing about bloody knights and ladies of all fucking things.  Never would have thought it of myself back when I was just a gardener.  But then I got to thinking out the stories when I was digging at the ground.  I had plenty of time for thinking then.”

The warmth of him was pleasing and Sansa reluctantly moved back.  But he kept his hands on her shoulders.

“Oh god! You, _E. E. Craddock_ , read some of _my_ fic!”

“It weren’t bad girl.  You should write some of your own stuff too though, make your own worlds.” He smirked slightly then. “Do you ever write erotic fics? I should like to read some o’that too!”

She blushed deeply, and he laughed before he tipped her head up with a large finger.  “I would be very interested in reading some of that.” His voice was low, dangerous, and intense. 

She was reminded of Brack on the Labyrinthine steps again.  But Sandor looked nothing like him with those terrible scars and his darkness. Sansa suddenly realised that the character he’d written that was most alike to him in personality and way of talking, was crafted instead to be handsome and fair.  Sadness swept over her as she realised that he’d erased his scars in writing himself into the world of Northall.  She looked up into his dark grey eyes.

“Can I ask the author for one favour?”

“I aint telling you how it ends!  You won’t thank me even if I did, it’d ruin the reading of it all for you!”

“No, I was going to ask you something else entirely.” She looked up at him shyly, locking his grey eyes with her blue.  “Might I have a kiss from my favourite author?”

He seemed startled for a moment, but then he leant down, joining his lips to hers in a kiss that made her stomach twist in the most delightful way.  And then suddenly Sansa saw exactly how to write those scenes that had been causing her difficulty, suddenly she felt the intense fire she needed to make the scenes come alive.  She found herself gasping slightly into his mouth.

“God, girl!  You’re a fucking inspiration!” He whispered as he kissed up her jawline towards her hair, taking an earlobe into his mouth to nip at it, his hands pulling her against him, one strap of her dress drifting down as he did.

“Tell me, what do you want to do now, little bird?” He said, eagerness for her burning in his eyes.

“Sorry, no spoilers.” She laughed lightly, enjoying the consternation on his face.  She slipped her hand into his.  “But I am hoping for a sequel, at least.”

And then he was kissing her again, his hands on her waist, pushing her against the lockers as fusty academics walked past grumbling about inappropriate behaviour in the library.

“Do you want to go to the park with me?” She whispered into his ear, and then his hand was in hers and he was leading her again, pulling her gently towards the great glass doors of the British Library, and she laughed and near skipped to keep up with him.


End file.
